GOLDAST, Melchior Haiminsfeld (1576-1635), an historical writer and collector whose works did great service to the study of the older documents of Germany, was born, January 6, 1576 (or 1578), of poor Protestant parents, near Bischofzell in Thurgau. His university career at Ingoldstadt and Altdorf was cut short by his poverty; but at length, in 1603, after he had spent some time at St Gall and Geneva, partly supported by the learned and benevolent jurist Bartholomeus Schobinger, he obtained the post of secretary to Henry, duke of Bouillon, and with him he went to Heidelberg and Frankfort-on-the-Main. But Goldast, though able and laborious, had fallen into an unsettled way of life, and in 1604 we find him in the service of the Baron Hohensax—then the possessor of that unique manuscript of old German poems which now forms one of the treasures of the National Library at Paris, and which Goldast was the first to make partially accessible by the press. Before long he was back in Switzerland, and by 1606 he was again in Frankfort living by his pen, and finding his efforts to obtain a regular post frustrated by Lipsius and Scioppius, whom he had offended by his outspokenness. In 1611 Jιe was appointed councillor at the court of Saxe Weimar; in 1615 he entered the service of the count of Schaumburg at Bückeburg, and in 1625 returned to Frankfort. As the transport of his books from Bückeburg to Frankfort was attended with danger, owing to the warlike operations then on foot, he entrusted them to the town of Bremen, and they now form part of the municipal library. Appointed in 1627 councillor to the emperor and to the elector of Treves, Goldast soon after passed into the service of the landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, who raised him to be chancellor of the university of ...